权益分类	功能权益	普通用户	{{item.name}}会员
{{category.name}}	{{benefitItem.name}}

Individual variation in the costs of molecular parental investment: cooperation, conflict and mutualism in family life

分子父母投资成本的个体差异：家庭生活中的合作、冲突和互利共生

基本信息

批准号：
NE/H019731/1
负责人：
Rebecca Kilner
金额：
$ 52.65万
依托单位：
University of Cambridge
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2011
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2011 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FH019731%2F1
关键词：
Individual variation costs molecular parental

项目摘要

Understanding the evolution of cooperation is arguably a key element of understanding the evolution of life. A major outstanding challenge is to explain individual variation in contributions to cooperation. We propose to investigate whether the fitness costs associated with cooperative behaviour can explain individual contributions to cooperation. Our experiments will focus on parental investment, a commonly overlooked form of cooperation. We will focus specifically on a novel aspect of burying beetle parental investment: the antibacterial activity of the anal exudates, which the beetles use to protect their breeding resource from bacterial attack. Burying beetles are ideal for this work because we can quantify and manipulate the fitness costs of this form of parental investment in a way that few other study systems would allow. We propose to identify intrinsic sources of variation in the costs of providing parental investment by inducing trade-offs with the immune system, by varying developmental conditions in early life, and by examining the underlying genetic architecture of the antibacterial activity in the anal exudates. We also plan to identify the antibacterial molecules in the anal exudates, as a first step towards identifying the genes involved in their production. (These molecules could also turn out to be of medical or agricultural value). We shall determine extrinsic sources of individual variation in the costs of this molecular parental investment by experimentally varying ecological conditions and by manipulating social influences on the costs of parental investment by changing the partner's level of parental investment. Finally, burying beetles appear to have a mutually beneficial relationship with mites, which they transport between breeding opportunities. We shall investigate whether mites influence the costs of parental investment by adding or removing them from breeding beetles. Our proposal is novel and of high scientific value because i) it proposes to measure and manipulate fitness costs and constraints associated with cooperation in multiple ways; ii) it combines analyses of immune function with cooperation and conflict within the family; and iii) it spans multiple levels of biological analysis by investigating how social interactions and interactions between species influence investment at both the molecular and physiological level.

理解合作的进化可以说是理解生命进化的关键因素。一个主要的突出挑战是解释对合作贡献的个体差异。我们建议研究与合作行为相关的适应度成本是否可以解释个人对合作的贡献。我们的实验将集中在亲代投资上，这是一种经常被忽视的合作形式。我们将特别关注埋葬甲虫亲代投资的一个新方面：肛门分泌物的抗菌活性，甲虫用它来保护它们的繁殖资源免受细菌的攻击。埋葬甲虫是这项工作的理想选择，因为我们可以量化和操纵这种亲代投资形式的适应成本，这是其他研究系统无法做到的。我们建议通过诱导与免疫系统的权衡，通过改变生命早期的发育条件，以及通过检查肛门分泌物中抗菌活性的潜在遗传结构，来确定提供亲代投资成本变化的内在来源。我们还计划鉴定肛门分泌物中的抗菌分子，作为鉴定其产生相关基因的第一步。（这些分子也可能具有医学或农业价值）。我们将通过实验改变生态条件，以及通过改变伴侣亲代投资水平来操纵社会对亲代投资成本的影响，来确定这种分子亲代投资成本个体差异的外在来源。最后，埋葬甲虫似乎与螨虫有一种互利的关系，它们在繁殖机会之间运输螨虫。我们将研究螨虫是否会影响亲代投资的成本，通过在繁殖甲虫中添加或移除螨虫。我们的建议是新颖的，具有很高的科学价值，因为1)它提出了测量和操纵与合作相关的适应度成本和约束的多种方式；Ii)将免疫功能分析与家庭内部的合作与冲突相结合；iii)通过研究社会互动和物种之间的相互作用如何在分子和生理水平上影响投资，它跨越了多个生物分析水平。